Thursday, April 3, 2014

Helium at Yellowstone and North American Craton Comes to Life




It is rather obvious that we are in the midst of a surge of seismic activity along the boundaries of the North American Craton and this is unusually activating the Yellowstone super volcano. It remains all low level but that is true of all such events in their early manifestation.  Recall the weeks of waiting for Mount St Helens.


Hopefully this culminates in a significant discharge soon and we can all go back to sleep.  Most likely it will.  In the meantime we put it all on watch and wait.  The longer the wait the less pleasant the likely outcomes.


In the meantime, Helium release in Yellowstone surely presages an eruption of some sort is on the way.  It may be no more than another hot spring or mud volcano.  It will not be a stack building volcano simply because we do not get that here.  Yet it also created the Snake River Basalt flows.


Yellowstone’s Belching Helium: Why’s This So Important?

Monday, March 31, 2014 18:11


With Yellowstone now venting helium, Dahboo7 explains to us via why this is so crucially important. Helium is one of the most accurate ways to determine whether or not a volcano is becoming active. Helium in fact is considered one of the most ideal geochemical indicators of anticipating when a volcanic eruption might take place.


“We believe that helium can anticipate the detection of magmatic movement even before those movements can be detected by seismic activity,” said Eleazar Padrón, a geochemist at Spain’s Technological Institute for the Renewable Energies, who led the work.


An almost ideal gas

Researchers have been using gas emissions to forecast volcanic eruptions for at least 30 years, but they usually focus on carbon dioxide, the second most abundant gas (after water vapor) in volcanic eruptions. Helium, a noble gas, is a better candidate for tracking and forecasting eruptions, Padrón explained, because it doesn’t react with rocks or groundwater and microorganisms don’t consume or produce helium.


“Because of these properties, helium has been considered by geochemists as an almost ideal geochemical indicator,” he told OurAmazingPlanet.




3/30/2014 — URGENT EARTHQUAKE WATCH — YELLOWSTONE , SOUTHERN CALIFORNIA, NEW MADRID, EAST COAST, PNW

I do not issue this “watch” lightly, and hope things calm down very soon.
Video update here:
However, until things begin to cool off, I’m left having to issue an urgent ‘earthquake watch’ for certain areas along the edge of the North American Craton.
This screenshot below shows the past 48 hours of earthquakes in the continental United States and Canada … alongside there is a diagram of the North American Craton.

Clearly, heavy activity building upon the Western portion of the plate, and we’re seeing a massive area become displaced — from Southern California, to Yellowstone — from Yellowstone to Oklahoma.
The entire displaced area having moved on a mid 4.0M range (or GREATER) in the past 24 – 48 hours.

In other words, over the past two days, the entire western portion of the plate has moved on a 4.0M basis across 1000+ miles.

This means we can expect a major strain to be currently building upon the “edge” of the craton.  Also areas meeting the Western and Eastern edges of the plate (British Columbia to the West, and Quebec Canada to the East) MUST be building stress to the point of release at some point soon.
All this would be near term , 3-5 days at the most… if we can get past the next few days without any event along the edge of the craton greater than a 5.0M , we’ll be in the clear for a minute.

For the next few days, be aware of the massive amount of pressure building (and showing) along the Western portion of the North American plate.

The pressure will continue manifesting as earthquakes along the edge of the craton — areas such as Yellowstone, Oklahoma, and Southern California .  Some of these release events could be rather noticeable (sizable greater than the previous events over the past few days, i.e. greater than 5.0M).

New Madrid, and East Coast United States — particularly along the craton edge, be aware of possible movement.  Not the “big one” , but maybe something similar to the 2011 Virginia earthquake (5.9M).

We saw this kind of buildup along the plate during 2011 before the East Coast earthquake.

Below is a screenshot of the past 7 days of 2.5M and greater earthquakes in the United States, compared to a diagram of the craton, clearly the edge is being pushed:

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Past 7 days of earthquakes in the United States — up to noon March 30 2014 — entire edge of the craton has been displaced


Over the past several days, I’ve been warning for this movement to take place.
 The screenshots below are from March 26th , into the 27th — showing  precursor earthquakes — made note of these events in two different website posts.
March 27, 2014 here:

March 26, 2014 here:

It appears the Volcanic earthquakes the days before all of this did indeed have a hand to play in all of the unrest:

Oklahoma having a swarm of their own.. Multiple 4.0M+ events…. (two 4.3M and one 4.4M).  Occurring at a large fracking operation.


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Multiple earthquake monitoring links can be found here:


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